Free Spring Printables and Montessori-Inspired Spring Activities

It’s almost spring! And I have lots and lots of great spring resources for parents, teachers, and caregivers of preschoolers through first graders. I also have a new Montessori-inspired spring pack for our newsletter subscribers’ resource library!

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links (at no cost to you).

Montessori Shelves with Spring Themed Activities

Montessori Shelves with Spring-Themed Activities

You’ll find Montessori-inspired spring numbers, letters, and and more (part of my subscriber freebie pack, so just sign up for my email to get the link and password … or check the bottom of your latest newsletter if you’re already a subscriber)

You could mix your spring themed activities among your shelves according to curriculum area. Or you could have a special spring themed area something like the one pictured. My shelves at the beginning of our unit have a mixture of skill levels mainly from preschooler through early elementary. Many of the activities can be adapted for a variety of levels. If you’re a homeschooler, just choose the activities that work for your child’s interests and ability levels. If you don’t have room for all the activities you’d like to do, simply rotate them.

Montessori Book Basket and Shelves with Spring-Themed Activities

Even though I have books on shelves, I keep the main Montessori-friendly books for our current theme in a book basket by the themed shelf. You’ll find a few of the books I’ve used here. I’ll publish a spring book post with more details at a later date.

Notice the framed Claude Monet Springtime print. It’s a free download from Wikimedia … perfect for a Monet artist feature for the month!

I’m loving our recent addition! I purchased a Li’l DAVINCI art frame that opens in the front for easily changing a free art masterpiece printable or vintage illustration to fit with the month’s theme. The frame can be switched from horizontal to vertical without changing the hanger, which is perfect!

Everything Spring Book from National Geographic Kids with Sensory Nature Scavenger Hunt Materials

Free Printable: Sensory Nature Scavenger Hunt from The Pragmatic Parent. I love the sensory nature of this nature scavenger hunt. It’s perfect for a variety of ages! (Note: The blog for the one I used is no longer available, so the link is to a different printable.)

Everything Spring from National Geographic Kids has beautiful photographs as do all National Geographic books, and it gives a nice introduction to spring for preschoolers.

I placed the sensory nature scavenger hunt printable on a clipboard. I’ve added these child-size binoculars that work well and aren’t a toy. My 6-year-old granddaughter, Zoey, loves these binoculars and uses them often. We first them in our birdwatching unit last year.

Up in the Garden and Down in the Dirt Book with Bulb and Wildflower Identification Cards

Up in the Garden and Down in the Dirt Book with Spring Flower and Bulb Identification Cards

Free Printable: Spring Flower and Bulb Identification from Wildflower Ramblings

I typically keep my 3- or 4-part cards in this Montessori cards display box. It’s so attractive and doesn’t take up much space on my shelf. Even though I just have these cards cut for matching, the display box works great for them, too!

Up in the Garden and Down in the Dirt is a lovely Montessori-friendly book recommended for ages 5-8. I’m especially focusing on nature and flowers in these spring activities. The cards can be used for simple matching with toddlers and young preschoolers while older children can match the names of the bulbs with the flowers.

Spring Pages from A Tree for All Seasons with Montessori Spring Matching Cards

Free Printable: Spring matching cards from Montessori for Everyone

I often keep my matching cards in this wooden tray. It’s only 6.5 x 4 x 1″ (a tiny size that’s hard to find in a wooden tray – especially one that’s already finished).

National Geographic Kids A Tree for all Seasons has a maple tree through the seasons with gorgeous photographs.

In the background you’ll see The Children’s Illustrated Bible and our Lenten tray. I vary the tray a bit each year, depending on the ages of my grandkids. The Lenten tray is on my Montessori shelves in some form each spring.

Letter U for Umbrella Letters with Salt Tray and Spring Phonogram Cards

Letter U for Umbrella Letters with Salt Tray and ng for Spring Phonogram Card

Free Printables: Letter u for umbrella for salt or sand writing tray (part of my subscriber freebie pack, so just sign up for my email to get the link and password … or check the bottom of your latest newsletter if you’re already a subscriber)

You’ll see a variety of simple letter writing trays in my previous unit study posts. I often used the wooden tray from the Melissa & Doug Lace and Trace Shapes. You can use whatever tray or container work best for you, though. This time I just colored salt with food coloring.

I now use this lovely spelling/alphabet tray from FamilyTreeWW on Etsy. I love that it has a slot that fits sandpaper letters as well as any type of cardstock! Zoey is focusing on spelling and needs more room for writing longer words. We’re also working on cursive. So I’m showing an example of how you can use the salt writing tray to focus on both manuscript and cursive writing.

If you would like help with introducing phonetic sounds, introducing objects with sounds, or beginning phonics in general, check out my DIY Beginning Montessori Phonics with Preschoolers.

Free Printables: “ng” spring phonogram cards and “ai” rain phonogram cards (part of my subscriber freebie pack, so just sign up for my email to get the link and password … or check the bottom of your latest newsletter if you’re already a subscriber)

Free Printable: “ng” Sound with Letters from MontessoriSoul

Free Printable:“ai” Sound with Letters from MontessoriSoul

On the right side of the shelf in the Montessori shelf photos, you’ll see the phonogram work I’m featuring for the spring unit: ng for spring and ai for rain. These activities are very simple to prepare. I simply print out and make booklets with the printables from MontessoriSoul. I have a post and video on how to introduce words starting with phonograms, even with very young children.

Matching Manuscript and Cursive Dandelion Flower Letters with Cursive Movable Alphabet

Free Printable: Dandelion flower alphabet cards in manuscript and cursive (part of my subscriber freebie pack, so just sign up for my email to get the link and password … or check the bottom of your latest newsletter if you’re already a subscriber)

When we started working with cursive letters, I used a cursive tracing board with themed alphabet letters in manuscript and cursive. I got the 2-sided version (with capital letters on one side and lowercase on the other), since capital cursive letters aren’t commonly seen on written materials.

After tracing the letters on the tracing board, Zoey would place the manuscript letters in alphabetical order. Then she matched each of the cursive letters to the manuscript letters. We don’t typically use the cursive tracing board now, but we’ve added the wooden cursive movable alphabet letters.

We’ve been using a traditional small wooden manuscript movable alphabet, although we’re now working with the cursive wooden movable alphabet. There are a number of price ranges available. You can find more movable alphabet resources in my “Inexpensive and DIY Movable Alphabets” post.

The Reason for a Flower book is one I still have from when I homeschooled my now-adult kids. I’ve always enjoyed Ruth Heller books.

Umbrella CVC Matching Activity

Free Printable: Umbrella CVC Matching Activity by Becka from Miniature Masterminds for Totschooling

This is a super-easy-to-prepare activity that can be adapted for a variety of ages. I wouldn’t use it for a child who reads easily, like Zoey. But you could use it to focus on beginning sounds by only using the puzzle piece for the first letter of the word. It can also be used as a puzzle and way to identify letters in words with children who can identify letter sounds. And it can be used for blending words for children who are working on that skill.

I actually used this yesterday with my 2-year-old grandson, Caleb. He loves learning letter sounds and identifying letters. I simply asked him to find /c/ in cat, /a/ in cat, and /t/ in cat, for example. As he found the letters, he placed them on their place on the umbrella. He loved the activity and asked to repeat it three times! If this activity fits with work your child is ready for, just adapt it as needed.

Duckling Counting and Number Matching Activity

Free Printable: Duckling Numbers (part of my subscriber freebie Montessori-Inspired Duckling Pack from a previous unit, so just sign up for my email to get the link and password … or check the bottom of your latest newsletter if you’re already a subscriber)

We just used materials I had used before for other activities. I often re-use materials in different years and for different units. We had a yellow duck nesting doll set with 10 ducks. I don’t get out the smallest ducks with toddlers, so I decided to use the largest duck to hold 9 ducks (from a 100-Pack Mini Rubber Ducks ) that we used for a Fun 100 Board Extension – Count 100 Ducks {Free Printable}.

For this activity, I have the child trace one of the sandpaper letters, find the matching number card, and then count out that number of ducklings. You can just use 1-5 for younger children or even just use the cards for number matching.

This is an activity that both of my 2-year-old grandchildren will enjoy!

April Showers Bring May Flowers Addition and Multiplication Equations

Working with April Showers Bring May Flowers Addition and Multiplication Equations

Free Printable: Rainy Day or April Showers Number Cards 1-19 are available with addition and multiplication symbols (part of my subscriber freebie pack, so just sign up for my email to get the link and password … or check the bottom of your latest newsletter if you’re already a subscriber). Print out enough of each number for whatever activity you want to do.

I wanted to focus on the “April showers bring May flowers” phrase with this activity. You could use the number cards in a variety of ways (such as with acrylic raindrops, miniature umbrellas, etc.). For this activity, I used dried flowers that I can use for a variety of activities. I like that they’re a real flower that can be used many times. They are very fragile, so they’re perfect for kids who are working on concepts such as addition and multiplication. The tiny glass vases are from Montessori Services. These are the two smallest ones, although I don’t remember which was the slightly larger one.

There are so many ways to use the number cards for a variety of ages. This activity is for Zoey, who’s interested in multiplication right now. I wanted to show how multiplication can be another way of showing addition. So, first the child adds the flowers and sees that multiplying them is the same.

Completed April Showers Bring May Flowers Addition and Multiplication Equations

This shows the completed equation. And the activity includes a bit of flower arranging as well!

Free Montessori-Inspired Spring Pack

Montessori-Inspired Spring Pack for DIY Cards and Counters, Number or Letter Matching, Number or Letter Basket, Bead Bar Work, Hands-on Math Operations, Number or Letter Salt/Sand Writing Tray, Letter Tracing, DIY Movable Alphabet, and Creative Writing (subscriber freebie, so just sign up for my email to get the link and password – or check your inbox if you’re already a subscriber).

Free Spring Printables

I’m no longer publishing a list of free printables from other blogs for each theme. Many of the free printables get changed to paid printables or to subscriber freebies with new links. So it just became too difficult to keep all those links updated while adding new ones each month. Instead, I’ll be sharing many free spring printables (along with free holiday printables and a few other types of free printables throughout our unit) as my Free Printable of the Day at our Living Montessori Now Facebook page. For the Free Printable of the Day, I try to share only instant downloads and other free printables that don’t require signing up for a mailing list. I also share each of the Free Printables of the Day to my Free Printable of the Day Pinterest Board.

Of course, be sure to check the activities above for links to the free printables I used. Those are typically instant downloads, although I’ll sometimes use a subscriber freebie from someone’s site. And I feature our subscriber pack for the month!

More Spring Resources, Including Many Free Printables

Spring Books for Kids

For more Montessori-inspired spring activities, check out these posts with lots of activities and resources:

If this is your first time visiting Living Montessori Now, welcome! If you haven’t already, please join us on our Living Montessori Now Facebook page where you’ll find a Free Printable of the Day and lots of inspiration and ideas for parenting and teaching! And please follow me on Instagram, Pinterest (lots of Montessori-, holiday-, and theme-related boards), and YouTube. While you’re here, please check out the Living Montessori Now shop.

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